


Prologue

by nukablastr



Series: No Closer to Peace [1]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, Episode 17x16: Starstruck Victims, Episode Related, Friendship, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-21 04:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11350062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nukablastr/pseuds/nukablastr
Summary: There was a shared understanding of something unspoken, something that tugged at the threads of Carisi's own understanding of all those moments shared before, every sharp word lobbed in his direction.And then, before he could make sense of the shift between them, Benson's voice cut through the murmur.--Set at the end of 17x16 - Starstuck Victims, this is a small coda to the episode, and the prologue to a series that follows Sonny Carisi through the developments that come to light during their investigation of the Catholic Church.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My very first thing! Possibly more ambitious than it will wind up being, but I've written most of the way through the catholic church arc, and have vague plans to take it at least a bit into the new season. 
> 
> Canon-compliant to a point, as this basically is my attempt at filling in a lot of the blanks in the series the way I'd imagine them to be written. Thus, it will both have spoilers for season 17/18, and also go off script a little.
> 
> Tagged for canon-level descriptions of sexual assault/violence, though the prologue not as much.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing/nobody (except a couple cats and they'd deny it). I'm neither a cop nor a lawyer (nor a priest), so I apologize for any inaccuracies as I imagine the inner workings of it all. There was an honest attempt at editing, but if anything sticks out, let me know. 
> 
> Series title courtesy of [Future Islands - Time on Her Side](https://genius.com/Future-islands-time-on-her-side-lyrics) because I'm not excellent at titles, and those are some good lyrics.

Carisi was a tangle of nerves that morning. He was damn lucky to make it out of his apartment fully dressed and on time. It was not much unlike every other morning since he'd taken the bar exam, but today his worry felt more complex, burned tighter in his chest.

Anxiety slithered into that hollow place at the base of his throat, the apex of his collar, found him thick in the swell of his tie. It was a perceptible rattle at the bottom of each breath as he examined himself in the mirror, smoothed his hair, and rubbed the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes. He worried, not for the last time, that he might not survive the wait for the results to be posted.

If he thought he was anxiety-ridden in his zombie-walk into that exam room last weekend, he had no conception of what life was like on the other side -- well, barely on the other side -- waiting for the results. Going through the motions, the day-to-day of the office and the job on top of the waiting and wondering, it got to him.

When the days moved fast, when there was plenty to do, he could forget it all easily, put it in the basement of his brain. But it was the scenarios he'd concoct in the slow moments of the day that ate at him, the ones where he'd have to tell Rollins and Fin how, well, not passing the first time happens, how it's often expected, how he'll try again 'cause that's the kind of guy he is. How, as brightly as he could muster, he's not discouraged by it, of course he'll try again.

Worse still, he imagined telling the lieutenant those things.

And telling Barba -- well, for some reason that was the most punishing image he'd come back to, the one on heavy rotation in the moments where he tried and failed to find sleep in the darkest hours.

Rollins and Benson, their brand of disappointment wrapped in a familial package of caring and encouragement and, then, shared concerned looks when they thought he wasn’t looking -- that would be one thing to endure. He had sisters, he had a lifetime of enduring that exact thing.

The act of proving true the most biting remarks Barba had made about his law school efforts in their time working together, however, that was the gnawing idea that kept him up. He'd been too wrapped up in the spiral of these thoughts lately to mention any of it to anyone: the fact that he'd taken the exam, the fact that it was at the heart of any distraction he might be suffering from.

Kristi's case was their focus for now; it had been for weeks. It wasn't an easy case at any juncture, and thankfully its twists and turns allowed him a lot of freedom from the inner workings of his own brain. It was, as they'd all said at some point, a classic he said she said, only with an additional "he" this time, all the complications of money and fame involved, and ultimately hinging on a tale told by an unreliable narrator in her own life.

She'd wanted her day in court, all the righteous vindication that was owed to her, and while she got that day she got none of the vindication. Carisi wasn't sure how Barba would recover the jury after her abysmal cross, only sure of the fact that the ADA would somehow, in his own way. He almost always did.

So it was a surprise when Buchanan, his voice practically dripping with unearned humility, presented the fact that the defense was willing to rest on the "abject failure" of the prosecution to "present a coherent case." Carisi found himself buffeted by the wave of tension in the gallery. "Abject failure" was a well-worn pebble in the swirling tides of his own self-reflection; it was never something he would have associated with the put-together image of their ADA. How had he not foreseen this twist?

In a better moment, Barba's retort would have been a quick dagger; instead, today, he stammered lamely against the impenetrable wall that was Buchanan's endless posturing. Barba deflated slow into his seat, long fingers finding his temples in frustration. It was a dismal finale for sure. Carisi felt the moment deep in his gut. He couldn't stand to see his heroes cut down, made so small.

Kristi looked from detective to detective, aghast. When her watery eyes met Carisi's momentarily, all he could give her was the grimace he wore. It wasn't what they wanted, sure; it also wasn't a complete surprise. From a legal standpoint, Buchanan's decision made sense. Why give Barba any room to recover when the narrative had landed right where he needed it to?

He couldn't help his gut reaction as he watched Barba slink out of the courtroom. Animated by the man's apparent need to go unnoticed, Carisi jumped to his feet and followed quick in his footsteps, abandoning any pretense of consoling Kristi with the others.

He wasn't sure what he was hoping for -- to catch Barba, to read something optimistic on his face maybe -- maybe more to be the one to put it there. It was an instinct born of a childhood as the perpetual brother-to-a-pack-of-sisters: always ready to fix a problem, because there was always a problem to be fixed.

That instinct was a large part of the winding trail that led him not just to policework for its opportunities to solve the big problems -- but to being a cop who was considering a career jump for the opportunities to be even more helpful to those in need.

When he rounded the corner, he found Barba dropping his shoulders, removing his phone from his ear and thumbing at it briefly before slipping it in his suit pocket. There was no shard of optimism to be seen on his face -- in fact, his face was a thousand miles from the moment they were in. He was already somewhere further along, hearing the verdict, maybe hearing the DA's reaction to the verdict, reading pithy headlines.

"Hey counselor, you got a second?"

"Not really," he replied, eyes racing around the hallway, barely acknowledging Carisi as he approached. "I've got fifteen minutes before I have to face a firing squad."

"Yeah? The honchos comin' down on you, huh?"

"Ohh they're past that," he said, once more sinking into a ready seat.

"Look," Carisi offered, taking the seat beside him. "Kristi is a-- well she's a horrible victim, but she's not lying. I mean, you saw what those guys tried to do to Rollins--"

"They're going to get away with that too," Barba interjected, distant, as if suddenly remembering this added layer to his failure.

"Yeah," he continued, gesturing, "but it's worth the fight. Listen I-- ," and this is where he found himself stumbling off script, diverging from his originally planned pep talk. Though, really, he'd had nothing past this moment particularly prepared, so it wasn't surprising how the words came quick and unpracticed.

"I uh-- I took the bar last weekend, and--" he shrugged, "I think I did okay." It was an admission he'd imagined a better timing for. One where he wasn't speculating on the outcome, where he wouldn't run the risk of someday having to explain why second, or god forbid third, time's the charm.

At this, Barba truly met his gaze for the first time since Carisi had begun to speak. "Good for you," his voice was cautious, slow.

"And you've been pretty hard on me," Carisi smiled, putting it lightly in his own estimation.

A slight smirk fought its way over the taut expression Barba wore, and at once, the man seemed struck by the urgent need to move, to distance himself from the moment. He smoothed his pants over his knees before standing up, gathering his things, giving a cursory glance to clerks and officers around them.

"But I want you to know," Carisi kept pace, standing to close the distance as words tumbled out, "that if I did pass, a lot of that's because of the time I spent working with you. I admire your, uh--"

"Suicidal streak?"

It wasn't what he was going to say, not at all, but he lost whatever those words would have been in the surge of the moment. He was at once overcome by the fact that the simple phrase Barba had supplied in their absence had contained so much more than what it presented on the surface. There was a hidden depth revealed in the drag of his gaze, the sly smile that angled quick over his lips, the pitched quality of his voice. 

The room seemed to dim then, and everything slowed around them, the chatter and movement.

There was at once a shared understanding of something unspoken, something that tugged at the threads of Carisi's own understanding of all those moments shared before, every sharp word lobbed in his direction.

And then, before he could make sense of the shift between them, Benson's voice cut through the murmur.

"Hey guys?" Her tone cleared Barba's face of everything at once, leaving him blank and distant once more. She stopped short of the two of them, indignant, regarding the phone held in hand as though it had betrayed her. "The jury's back?"

"What, already?" Carisi cut toward her, exasperated by the swift turn of events, the time that slipped through their fingers. "They just sat down."

"Oh I doubt they even sat," Barba's voice behind him had drifted back to that unknowable place. Carisi stole a glance, but the ADA was somewhere beyond them again, steeling himself against whatever moment was playing out in his head.

Benson led the way back to the courtroom, Barba behind her, and as Carisi followed them, he couldn't help replaying everything that had just transpired in his head: his initial decision to follow, why he only thought to say things that emphasized the monumental failings of this case, what he thought sharing his bar exam status would help, what million things he could have said better in that moment.

As the courtroom filled, Carisi kept coming back to what Barba meant by his suicidal streak, and he couldn't figure out why those two words remained with him throughout the reading of the verdict, sat heavy in his chest.


	2. Chapter 2

"Talk about a Waterloo," Carisi said with a snort as they watched the news unfold, the anchor presenting the sordid video of Rollins' undercover encounter with D'Amico and Panko. "There goes his Netflix series."

"You never know," Dodds supplied, soft, as Benson relieved Carisi of the remote to silence the television.

"Nah, after this?" He turned to face Dodds behind him at the table, "He's toast." He knew Dodds had his own family entanglements with D'Amico, but he couldn't believe that he'd think the guy’s career would survive this kind of press. The court of public opinion had no sentencing guidelines.

Benson was not distracted from her warpath by their debriefing, however. Her voice was cold steel: "Rollins, my office please."

Carisi caught a dark glance from Rollins, who followed dutifully in tow, tail between her legs. What brass balls she must have, after all she'd gone through, to have leaked the video in the end. He craned to see if he could catch a whiff of whatever she was getting from the lieutenant, but Benson snapped her office blinds shut in an instant. So it _was_ that bad.

He busied himself with the remote once more, flipping the television back on, but the news coverage had moved on. Unable to keep thoughts to himself, he spoke to no one in particular: "Rollins is gonna catch some serious heat for that."

Dodds made a noncommittal sound in response, idly thumbing through his phone.

"From a moral standpoint," he gestured towards the television, "I mean they obviously got what they deserved. Legally, though..." Carisi trailed off. Dodds continued on his phone, seemingly uninterested in keeping up his end of conversation. 

Legally, Carisi thought, Barba was gonna hate this development. He wondered what the counselor was doing at this moment, where he was as he was likely finding out about this in some way or another.

Dodds suddenly stood from the table with a gruff, "Excuse me." Carisi watched him, curious as he drifted towards Benson's closed door. To his surprise, Dodds gave a light rap on the glass, then entered without waiting.

With Dodds' interruption, Rollins stormed back into the bullpen. Carisi tried to act entirely invested in the news cycle, now far past the leaked tape fiasco and halfway into some local human interest story, but as with so many things, his emotional investments made his cover seem flimsy.

"What are you looking at Carisi?" Rollins called him out as she shuffled papers around on her desk, packing up for the day. Caught, he clicked off the television again and made to join her.

"You okay?" He nodded towards Benson's office.

"What do you think? She thinks I leaked."

Carisi cringed. "You didn't?"

"What the hell! Of course I didn't, Carisi."

"Nah, I wasn't saying I don't believe you, s'just... I mean, then who did?"

"Hell if I know. Like I said to her," she gestured to Benson's office, where Dodds had reappeared once more in the doorway, bidding the lieutenant a good night. "The only people who had it besides me were Buchanan and Barba. The judge too."

As Dodds passed them, he paid their conversation no mind, and Rollins watched him carefully.

"Barba would never," Carisi said, regretting immediately that his tone was more defensive than he'd intended. Rollins snapped her eyes back from Dodds, and he found himself quickly adding, "and I mean, obviously there's no reason Buchanan would. Or the judge. Look--"

"Forget it," she said, "look, I gotta get home." With a shrug, she added, "The sitter."

"Sure," he conceded, palms open. "Well hey, tell Jesse hi for me will ya?"

She gave him a halfhearted smile as she gathered her things and headed out.

"It'll work out," he called to her as she left, and she didn't reply.

Carisi plopped himself into his own desk chair and considered his glowing monitor. The bullpen had gone quiet in that way it rarely was, and he found his mind wandering. He replayed the conversation with Barba that afternoon for what felt like the thousandth time -- how the ADA had spoken to his own "suicidal streak."

If he'd had anything to do with the leaked video, it wouldn't be particularly suicidal to leave Rollins out to hang like that. Despite his flair for theatrics, this particular kind of incident seemed beneath Barba.

Still, he couldn't help wondering. When he'd mentioned Rollins' situation to the ADA, he'd seemed so despondent. "They'll get away with that too," he had said. Would he have wanted to maybe rectify that? Get in the last word?

Benson broke his train of thought: "You still here, Carisi?" She stood beside his desk in her jacket, ready to leave herself. "Go home. Get some sleep. You look like you could use it. Whatever it is," she gestured to his desk, "it can wait til tomorrow."

He gave her a smile. "Thanks lieu. I will, I promise. See you tomorrow." She returned the smile weakly and he didn't add that, truthfully, she was the one who looked like she could use sleep. A week's worth, at least.

He fully intended to leave the station directly behind her, but his feet betrayed him where they were planted wide on the linoleum floor and anchoring him in place. Instead, he bobbed his chair back and forth in the length between his feet, considering the day's events.

He pulled his phone from his pocket: no messages, save for a picture Bella had sent him of his niece earlier in the day. She sent them more frequently as of late, motherhood was making her proud, and they never failed to lighten his mood.

It was late, way too late to feign a reason to call on Barba's office. Even if he was there, he wouldn't be fielding calls. Carisi clicked on the man's contact information, bringing up the record of few, sporadic texts they'd ever shared, mostly related to his time spent shadowing on the Hodda case.

They weren't exactly on a conversational basis as colleagues, and what would he write anyway?

"Sorry about the case, hope everything was okay with the honchos and all, by the way, did you happen to leak Rollins' video to the news?"

Would Barba even admit to something like that? And what if he did? Would Carisi be able to keep that kind of secret? Would he have to?

Carisi closed out of the text conversation and pocketed the phone. He shut down his desk and gathered his things to leave, but couldn't shake the feeling that he didn't want to just go home. Evenings off took on a different form now that they weren't packed full of studying and fretting.

There was still fretting, sure, but aside from that, he didn't always know what to do with himself. He settled on picking up take-out, just enough of a diversion from heading straight home to his empty apartment.

***

As he sat in the plastic booth of the pizza joint around the corner waiting for his meal to be packed up and presented, he considered his phone again. He'd sent a quick message to Bella checking in on their day, and then thumbed back into Barba's conversation window.

What could it hurt to just check in, see if he'd heard? Then again, he considered whether he'd want to be on the hook for possibly breaking the news to the man. That might not be pretty.

"did u see the news?" he wrote, and considered the sentence. Too simple? Vague? He revised: "Did u see the news about the vid?"

Just then, a balding man in a faded apron called "Sonny!" out from behind the counter and, startled, Carisi pressed send.

"Damn," he muttered to himself, immediately regretting his casual phrasing.

He paid for his meal and left the restaurant, checking his phone a few times between the transaction and hitting the street. No response from either his sister or Barba. Finally, he told himself to stop expecting anything and focused his nervous energy on getting home safely.

It wasn't until he'd finished his meal in his apartment while watching yet another news cycle drone on, and packed up the rest of his food to take for lunch the next day, that he remembered the outstanding messages. He checked a final time before heading to bed and was surprised to see two messages and a missed call, all from Barba.

The first message was simply, "Unfortunately." 

Then, "I don't make it a habit to hold conversations through texts. I sincerely hope you had nothing to do with it." He checked -- the missed call must have been made in between the two messages.

"Well," Carisi said to nobody, "now what do I do?" The attempt at contact was made over a half hour ago, and he wasn't sure what constituted a reasonable window for a reply this late in the evening. Plus, now texting was ruled out, so did he really want to call back?

But, unfortunately, it now seemed like Barba took his text message as a conspiratorial nod to hypothetical misdeeds, rather than the casual attempt at assessing the situation that he'd meant it to be. He steeled himself with that thought -- that he'd now dug himself too deep -- and called.

Barba answered on the third ring, sounding tired. "Hello?"

"Hey counselor, sorry to bother ya so late, I got--"

He cut Carisi off, "Ah, detective, you've deigned to follow up."

"Ha. Sorry about that, I had to get home with my dinner, and then you know, eat it. And I was watching the news, lost track of my phone, so I didn't mean to disappear or anything."

"Certainly," Barba replied. "Anyway, tread lightly with whatever it is you need to tell me about this, because if I shouldn't know about it then I'd rather not." He sounded back to his snappy self, or at least, snappier than before. A little soft around the edges though, a barely perceptible change in tone. Carisi wondered where the ADA was fielding this call from.

"Nah, that's not what I meant at all. We didn't have anything to do with it. I was just seein' if you had heard anything."

"You wanted to see if I leaked the inadmissible video evidence of Rollins' botched undercover job to the news." It wasn't a question.

"Hey, you said earlier that you had a suicidal streak," Carisi replied with a laugh that was not returned on the other end.

"Maybe I do." Barba mused. "Not to that extreme, though, no."

"Ah, well."

"You should note that I'm not asking if you did leak the video, Carisi. I simply said that I hoped you didn't."

"Well, counselor, like I said, I didn't." He was beginning to get annoyed at the implication.

There was a beat of silence between them, and Carisi heard rustling on the other end.

"If that was all..." Barba trailed off, a clear attempt at dismissing the conversation.

Carisi bit his lip, cursing his inability to take an easy out when it was offered. He couldn't identify exactly why he needed to drag this conversation out, but the alternative was laying in bed considering better answers he could have written on the bar exam, so he persisted.

"Do you think there will be repercussions?"

"For whom? Are you concerned?"

"Counselor, for the last time, I didn't have anything to do with it. I don't know who did--"

"No need to get defensive." There was another rustle. "I sincerely doubt it, though. D'Amico and company more than likely want that video to leave the court of public opinion as quick as it came. Pursuing any real legal action would only make it more newsworthy."

"You're right," Carisi said. "Makes sense."

"I often am. Anything else, detective?"

"Nah, sorry to interrupt your evening, counselor."

"No need to apologize."

Carisi began to say a hasty goodbye when Barba continued over him, "You're not interrupting much."

"Yeah?" He was suddenly energized by the thought at this rare glimpse into Barba's personal life.

"Yes, well, as you know, not much to celebrate tonight."

"Ah yeah, well. You did the best with what you had."

"You don't have to tell _me_ that."

Carisi smirked. He had walked into that one, easy. "Sure, sure. Anyway, look, before I get out of your hair, I never got to finish what I was going to say earlier."

"Oh?"

"Before the jury came back, when we were in the hallway--"

"I remember that brief moment, yes."

Carisi suddenly felt self-conscious, and wished he’d had the sense to have ended the call earlier.

"Well?"

"I just wanted to say that I admire your-- ah, your good heart. Not your suicidal streak, which was your phrase not mine." He heard a slight chuckle on the other end. It still didn't really encompass what he'd meant to say, but it was the best he could do at that hour.

"Thank you, Carisi." Another pause, with some rustling, before Barba continued: "I'm not quite sure what to say, not entirely sure it’s deserved, so... I'll leave it at thank you."

"Well you're welcome, counselor. I'm glad to have--"

"Please," Barba cut in. "Don't. Though it might seem otherwise, there's really only so much I can hear about my finer qualities."

Carisi laughed. "Fair point. All the same, thank you."

"You're welcome. I look forward to hearing the results of your exam."

"Yeah. So do I."

After they hung up, Carisi's bedtime ritual was underscored by a hum of contentment. For the first time in a while, sleep found him ready and willing almost as soon as he laid down.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for your time! I am majorly indebted to all of the writers in the Barisi tag cause y'alls work is wonderful.


End file.
